My good friend's student visits from the mainland just about every year, and I get to go to lunch or dinner with them. The student is an instructor, and each year I ask him about his class and how many students he has. This year he told me that he has two students (less then I remember in previous years).

"Congratualtions," I said, "you must be getting good!"

As I have written before, I believe that there is an inverse relationship between the skill of the instructor and the number of students he has.

The student (instructor) mentioned to me that with two students, he could work more on quality control. His Sensei (my good friend) would probably call that "refinement."

I cannot have many students teaching the way that I do. To have many students, I would have to change the way that I teach -- and I cannot do that. My life's ambition, as a teacher, is to produce a few exceptional students who become teachers. Two or three exceptional students are a lot!

Monthly Archives

"Karate Jutsu" means "China Hand art". Karate came to Okinawa from China.
Only in the 1930s or so, was the term "Karate" changed to mean "Empty Hand".
"China Hand" was used in Hawaii until after World War II, and is still used in some dojo.